About Me

Hi! My name is Mike and this is what I love to do. It all started in high school with a co-op placement. I was a graphic designer in training at Key Industries. If you're not familiar with them, they mainly do screen printing. I've always had a thing for art and computers - I knew instantly this profession was for me!

Education

There I was, addicted to graphic design, now what? Headed to Holland College on a teeny-weeny island known as PEI. It was a 2 year program with the 1st year focusing strictly on theory and fine arts, while the 2nd year was technology (computer and software) based.

Experience

While studying at Holland College, Key Industries hired me for the summer months. Upon graduating, I got a job straight out of school with Yellow Pages where I spent the next 12+ years. Company-wide layoffs sent me back to the classroom where I picked up web design know-how. I did my work practicum at iNk and have been there ever since.

Skills

I compare myself to a ginormous swiss army knife. I never say "I can't", which translates to invaluable knowledge. From screen printing to multitouch interactive displays, print to rich media advertising, web design to video editing, social media and so much more, I jump at the opportunity to learn.

As one of iNk’s long time clients, Brunswick Square Shopping Centre approached us for a new website. It had to be relatively simple to update and include a number of features, including a dynamic cruise ship schedule (to be pulled from another website and presented in a responsive table) as well as an event calendar and wayfinding feature to name a few. www.brunswicksquare.ca is a WordPress website full of custom fields, custom post types and custom page templates for easy editing. It’s been a labour of love and great learning opportunity to take my WordPress and web development knowledge to the next level! I’m a huge advocate of WordPress and throw myself at any opportunity that comes up to further challenge my skills. In my spare time, you’ll likely find me on Lynda.com, Treehouse.com or reading through the codex in an attempt to soak it all in.

Base Engineering is a client of iNk and at one point we pitched some new logo concepts. These are a couple of such options. In the end, they stuck with the status quo. BASE Engineering is a world leader in developing radio remote control technology. These logos were created around the components and circuitry required that make up the 65,000+ units sold worldwide. http://baseng.com/

The Big Night In is a First Steps fundraiser. This was a personal, in-kind contribution to the annual event that helps raise funds for First Steps Housing Project. First Steps shelter pregnant and parenting young women who have no safe place to live.

This is a relatively new project. Our client was presented with a few logos options by JDRF headquarters but just weren’t “blown-away”. That’s where we come in! We presented them with a few options and the consensus was unanimous. Everyone was pleased! They ended up going with the mug/stein version.

This was another one of those “hmm, never done one of those before but am sure I can figure it out” projects. The development wasn’t too bad (just had to brush up on my Flash skills a wee bit) but figuring out how to go about having the ads 3rd party hosted and not pay thousands of dollars to do so was the real challenge. Google’s Double Click Studio and Aviso to the rescue! Visit http://bit.ly/bsqexpandables for a functional preview of the ads as served to cbc.ca